American Black Star Network

Saturday, May 2, 2015

Well, what's been happening is Ferguson exploded and now Baltimore is exploding and tensions between the police and the Black community are simmering to a boil.

I wrote this track because I was inspired by the death of Mike Brown and the outrage and the death of Eric Garner and the outrage.

I tried to see it from both sides of the issue, because I feel like that's the only way we're gonna get anywhere.

I didn't want to just vilify the police because it's cool to hate the cops or because I'm Black and I'm supposed to.

I wanted to write the song from the perspective of a guy who genuinely in his heart wanted to do good and didn't intend to do anything other than bring justice and security to a neighborhood he grew up in.

I also chose to wrote the song from the perspective of a young Black man because it must be hard to straddle the two worlds between the police and the Black community which always seem to be at odds, because there are some Black cops who are generally ignored in all the hoopla and outrage.

Friday, December 26, 2014

The day that we get to have my labor of love and on Santa Claus Day of all days (Listen to the E.P. it will explain everything).

Initially, I set out to make a full-length album called "Decline", which I've been consciously working on since 2011, but a few months ago, I started to feel like I needed to put something out to get the process going. And this is it.

The first song, "The End Is Near" is a journey into the current zeitgeist in America.

From Mike Brown and Eric Garner, to global warming. This track kinda sets the tone for the whole record

The second song "Santa Claus Died A Long Time Ago & Mrs. Claus IS Turnin' Tricks", is on the surface kind of dark, morbid Christmas song, but underneath that, it's a critique of how American capitalism

The third song "Stigmata" was a song I wrote for "Decline". In all honesty, it's just a brutal look into America's violent culture and how it shapes us as a people

And lastly, we have "In America" a song written from my perception as a jaded, disaffected spectator with the counterargument coming from foreigners who come from all over the world to taste the freedoms that maybe we take for granted.

I genuinely hope that people enjoy this taste of what I do. I'm kind of an MC. I'm kind of a producer. I'm really no engineer or mixer (really), but I have love for music and this record is the best I could do right now.

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Yup, you read that title correctly. I wrote a Christmas song about how jolly old St. Nick has left us after a long fight with the rich capitalists, angry that his "socialist" gift giving policy has cut into their annual Christmas gouging, leaving his dear wife to fend for herself and peddle her wears on the cold, dark, and unforgiving streets of my hometown, Gary, Indiana.

This is a track I dedicated to a kid from my hometown of Gary, Indiana named Christian Choate. One day I picked up the Gary Post-Tribune and saw this innocent kid with a face like Kurt Cobain's staring at me, compelling me to read his story. I opened the newspaper and I was completely floored by hearing about this kid who had been beaten, starved and eventually murdered by his own family, and then discarded like garbage in their backyard.
I mean, personally, I'm from Gary, Indiana, one of the most violent cities in America, and former "Murder Capital" of this great land, so I'm used to hearing and knowing about death and how it affects young people, but this really for lack of a better term, "fucked with me".
This wasn't gangbanging or drugs, not that those things are cool or that the people who die from those things aren't valuable, but it just seems like this is an even more cruel and injust death, because it was at the hands of the people who were supposed to be protecting him.
All I can do is hope this song keeps his memory alive.
Rest in Peace, Christian Choate (1995-2009)

I mean, this song & video is NOT for the weak-stomached or hearted. It's just some ol' school hardcore Hip-Hop, but with a political and social edge to it. The video is just the carnage that Americans do to each other and celebrate in movies, TV, and song.
For me, this song is basically spitting our violent American culture back into the faces of the people who enable it, YOU.